Monday, August 15, 2016

This presentation is about teaching
autonomy and focuses mainly on learning strategies, learner training and then on
the teacher’s role. Learner autonomy has been the ‘buzz word’ in foreign
language teaching in the recent twenty years. The development of autonomy in
learners presupposes the development of autonomy in teachers. It should be
emphasized that at the core of the notion of autonomy are the learner’s ability
and willingness to make choices independently. In foreign language learning
contexts, we are concerned mainly with helping learners to make and carry out
choices.With the teaching of language being more
and more communication-oriented, the tradiational classroom teaching is facing
a big challenge and is being replaced by the "learner-centered" one.
This means that learners will assume greater responsibility for their own
learning. That is to say, learner autonomy has to be enhanced to meet the need
of the new classroom teaching mode.

First: what is autonomy? [activity 1]

Major schools of learning: a personal
characteristic: it relies on attitude toward learning, previous experience
of learning and personality.

A political concept: our right
as a learner within a country and the recognition of the rights of a non native
speaker of English in relation to a native speaker within the global order of
English.

An educational framework: active
participation in the social processes of classroom learning, an active
interpreter of new information of what s/he knows.

What is stopping learner autonomy from becoming part
of the curriculum in most schools?

The first hurdle is the learners themselves. In fact,
they must master a variety of difficult skills in order to become an autonomous
leaner.

Raising
awareness: for most students, this means a change in how they
view the role of the student and teacher. So, it is important to present a new
viewpoint, encourage them to bring the inner processes of learning to the
conscious level of their thinking. Most activities are tightly structured and
teacher controlled. At this stage, we assume that the learners are not yet
responsible and need to be told. [ activity
2]

Changing
attitude: the next step is to introduce the skills introduced
in the previous stage. This is a slow process requiring a lot of practice
especially as it involves breaking away from old patterns of behavior. [activity 3: sit down/stand up]

Transferring
roles: requires considerable change in class management. The
activities are loosely structured and give the students considerable amounts of
freedom in accomplishing the tasks and deciding about tasks. [ activity 4: taking the teacher out of
the limelight]

A similar process has to be gone through by teachers
who wish to teach leaner autonomy.

I am
here to facilitate your leaning by providing resources and support

It is my
job to make sure that you work

As the
adult and the professional, I have the expertise to make the right
judgements and decisions about your learning

I trust
that you want to learn and will take the responsibility for your own
learning

Adapted from Brandes and Ginnes

Activity 2:
Raising awareness

Making the most of my English Classes:
score each suggestion from (0 (not important to 5 (very important)

How can I
help myself in class?

How can my
teacher help me?

Use English as much as possible

Listen and talk to me

Ask questions

Give me encouragement

Go to class as often as possible and arrive on time

Give me opportunities to talk and listen in English

Participate as much as possible

Make the lesson enjoyable

Add more suggestions

Make the lesson useful

How can my
classmates help me?

Make the lessons challenging

Listen and talk to me

Give me opportunities to read and write in English

Help me when I have difficulties

Show me how to do things

Correct me when I speak English

Help me when I have difficulties

Do exercises with me in class

Correct me when I speak English

Make me feel good about learning

Help me to pronounce English better

Add more suggestions

Add more suggestions

Activity 3:
Changing attitudes – Sit down/stand up

Group the students and give them a key word for a
category of words to listen out. Tell the students a story featuring lots of
words from the categories you have given out. Every time the group hears a word
related to their category, they must stand up or sit down. This helps to teach
the students that they can rely on the others in the group for the answer if
they have not heard it themselves. It also adds a kinesthetic element to the
activity which is unusual for many students.

Activity 4:Transferring
roles – taking the teacher out
of the limelight

“The Unified
Society of Believers” were a religious group founded in 1774 by Ann Lee who,
with her followers, emigrated to America later that same year. They worshipped
by singing, dancing, shaking, and whirling around. Eventually, they became
known as “The Shakers”.

The Shakers were a peaceful sect that
welcomed people of all races. They were against war and lived in their own
villages separate from the rest of the society. They lived communally, that is,
sharing their property and working for the common good. The qualities they
admired were kindness, generosity, modesty, purity, cleanliness, and love for
humanity.

The Shakers are probably best known for their
celibacy and industriousness. Single men and women did not marry. Married
couples who joined the religion had to live apart. In the Shaker community,
males and females lived in separate communal houses. They had strict rules
regarding behavior between sexes, such as never shaking hands or touching each
other in any way. When conversation between a man and a woman was necessary, it
was done in the company of others. At their almost daily meetings for
conversation and singing, males and females sat opposite each other.

Over the years, the original Shaker community
in New York expanded to twenty-four scattered among eight states in the eastern
United States. Many people were
attracted to their peaceful ways and clean crime-free villages. Eventually, the
Shakers paid a price for their celibacy, however, because without children to
carry on their traditions anb beliefs, their numbers eventually dwindled to a
very few.

Extracted from Weaving it Together, Book
3, Milada Broukai, pp 71-72

Somebody is watching you (categories= invasion
of privacy, new technologies, breaking the law, repression)

CCTV cameras were initially developed as a means of security for banks.
In Britain they first appeared in 1953 and by the 1960s, there were already a
few cameras in major streets of London. Today, there are more than 4 million
CCTV cameras across the country. The cameras are there to film dangerous or
illegal behavior. With new software, they can automatically recognize the faces
of known offenders, and a new kind of CCTV in the Netherlands can detect angry
voices and automatically warn the police of trouble. Some CCTV cameras can even
interact with the people they are watching. But these cameras don’t just watch
criminal, they watch all of us, almost all the time. Every time we go into a
shop, use a cash machine, or travel on public transport, a camera records our
actions.

The amount of surveillance in towns and
cities across Britain is increasing because it is thought to deter crime. Some
goods in shops have RFID (radio frequency identification tags) attached to
them. When you pick one of these items, the RFID tag sends a radio message to a
CCTV camera and the camera starts filming you. Shops say that this technology
helps to catch shoplifters –but only by treating everybody as a potential
criminal.

Every time you make or receive a call on your
mobile phone, the phone company knows the number of the phone you are calling
and how long the call lasts. It is even possible to work out your exact
location. And what about satellites? Are they watching us from space? How much
can they see? Anybody with a computer can download Google Earth and get satellite
photos of the entire world. Perhaps governments are using even more powerful
satellites to watch the illegal actions of their citizens. Even when you are at
home, you are not necessarily safe from surveillance. When you use your
computer to visit websites, you are probably sending and receiving ‘cookies’
without realizing it. Cookies transfer information from your computer to the
website and, in theory, could record which websites you visit.

Excerpt from Aim
High, Tim Falla and Paul A Davies, p. 4

Activity 5: How to involve learners in their learning
in a test-oriented educational system?

Assessment is
probably one of the most important tools to help our students learn.

Task 1 What is assessment?

Task 2: We have
two columns below and you should indicate which one is AOL (assessment of learning) and which one
is AFL (assessment for learning).

………………………..

………………………………..

. Integral
part teaching learning process

. Reflects on
and improves learning

. Process
oriented: how learning is going

. Diagnostic

. Promotes
collaboration

. Almost all
assessment tools

. Evaluates or
judges student achievement

. Collects
data and counts final grades

. Product
oriented: what’s been learned?

. Judgmental

. Promotes
competition

. Almost all
assessment tools

Assessment for learning is ……………………………………assessment and
assessment of learning is ………………………………………….assessment.

Tamba NGOM taught in Ndayane High school in Diourbel for four years. He was a
FLA (Foreign Language Assistant) in Birmingham, West Midlands, United Kingdom
where he worked in Swanshurst Girl School from October 1st 2007 to
May 31st 2008. From 2008 to 2015, he worked also as a teacher
trainer in English at Diourbel Regional Teacher Training Center where was the
Head of the Department of TIC and E-Learning. In 2013, he was sent by the
Ministry of Education to South Korea in the framework of the UNESCO-ROK Co-Sponsored
fellowship program to be immerged with the ins and outs of the Korean
educational system. In 2014, he co-presented with former senior RELO Suzan Strand at TESOL
international Convention in Portland, USA on ‘English Language Teacher Training in the Field – Literally!’

He completed successfully two
10-week e-learning sessions with Oregon (Critical Thinking in 2010) and
Maryland Universities (Assessment in 2012). In December, 2015 he was posted at
DFC (Direction de la Formation et de la Communication) as the ELT National
Pedagogic Coordinator.

TOPIC: HOW TO COPE
WITH MIXED-ABILITY CLASSES IN THE SENEGALESE CONTEXT?

SUMMARY
OF THE PRESENTATION

Mixed ability classes are a fact of not only language
classes but of all courses. The issue of mixed ability classes in our context
is all the more problematic as we are experiencing the phenomenon of the large
classes which are here to remain for years again.

Since no two students can be the same in terms of
language background, learning speed, learning ability and motivation, it is a
utopian view to think that our classes could be homogeneous in terms of these
aspects; no matter where we live in the world or at which school we teach.

Therefore, the teachers become the key factor in reaching each
and every student in a class. So, it is important for them to be aware of
the problems resulting from mixed abilities in their classes and to decide on
techniques and strategies that could be used to solve such problems.